Friday, October 26, 2012

Yet as more people come of age on Facebook, the line separating personal and professional relationships is becoming more ambiguous.

In the Russell Herder survey, more than 20 percent of about 1,000 online respondents said they are Facebook friends with their work supervisors, and nearly half of those employees were the ones to initiate the friend request. Read more....

Lillian Cunningham is the editor of the Washington Post’s On Leadership section. Gregory Thomas contributed to this report.

Can you resist walking between these stacks? Our desire doesn’t always correspond to its practical utility?

Today’s library users do not carry pencils and notebooks to a library. They do no longer want to be isolated to concentrate on deep study or contemplative reading when they are at a library. Rather, they have the dire need to be connected to the biggest library the human race ever had, the World Wide Web, always and even more so when they are at a library walking through the forest of fascinating knowledge and information. The traditional library space packed with stacks and carrels does not serve today’s library users well whether they are scholars, students, or the public visiting a library for research, study, or leisure reading. As more and more library resources are moved to the fast and convenient realm of the World Wide Web, libraries have been focusing on re-defining the library space. Now, many libraries boast attractive space almost comparable to trendy, comfortable, and vibrant coffee shops. The goal of these new library spaces are fostering communication, the exchange of ideas, and social learning. Read more.http://www.bohyunkim.net/blog/archives/2287

On a dark and stormy night, an employee of your local bookstore strolls into your home, starts tossing books you'd purchased over the last few years into a box, and — despite your protest — takes them all away without saying a word.

Thankfully that's not what happened to Linn Jordet Nygaard. Well, not exactly. The Norwegian woman found herself on the wrong side of bureaucracy, but the outcome was much the same (without as much mud on the carpet): Amazon turned off her Kindle account, blocking her from her own books. And they wouldn't tell her why.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

A lending library housed in a New York City phone booth. Photo courtesy of John Locke

Remember phone booths? A few weeks ago, this story about community libraries installed in phone booths gave me goosebumps. I quickly determined I must speak to the man behind these portable lending libraries. Lo and behold, I tracked him down. John Locke is a designer at an architecture firm in New York City and he also teaches a course at Columbia University called Hacking the Urban Experience. The class encourages students to explore and participate in innovative exercises that illuminate “existing urban conditions,” much like the way Locke re-imagines phone booths as libraries (without interfering with the booths’ primary function). Needless to say, he is interested in bringing to life parts of the urban landscape that have either been forgotten or underused. Cue phonebooths. These metal boxes are relics of the days before cell phones, but they’re also a kind of gorgeous and clunky reminder of how things used to be. Over the past few years, I’ve developed a strong love for anything pop-up: be they galleries, coffee shops, or, in this case, libraries. Locke and I spoke last night over Skype about his so-called “urban intervention.” As always, thanks for listening. [4:40]
[transcript]

His project is currently featured on Spontaneous Interventions. You can also find out how to make and install your own lending library on Locke’s blog, Graceful Spoon. And remember, sharing is caring.
Music Credits: Excerpt of “Day Two” by Paul Rucker with Hans Teuber, from the CD Oil. Excerpt of “Cigarettes” by Proviant Audio from their CD, Mushrooms. Both songs can be found on WFMU’s Free Music Archive, and were used courtesy of Creative Commons.

Words have to be put in context. Last week, Skip Dye, Random House’s VP of Library and Academic Sales, was quoted in Library Journal as saying, “Random House’s often repeated, and always consistent position is this: when libraries buy their RH, Inc. ebooks from authorized library wholesalers, it is our position that they own them.” Along with many others, I had many questions about what RH meant by “own.” I wrote Mr. Dye directly, noting that the Internet Archive was able to cut a check as a registered California library to purchase books for Open Library. Mr. Dye returned my message, and yesterday we had a long conversation, running almost an hour. At the end of our discussion, I better understand how much ownership libraries have of Random House titles: Nada. Libraries don’t own anything. Read more...

As an intern, one of the best pieces of career advice I ever received was “Be a dragon-bull.”

For many, internships are the first step into the real world; unfortunately they sometimes provide a rude awakening. I had such an experience in my first major internship. As someone who had always succeeded in life, I had become overconfident. Read more.

One of the more popular trends these days has been the influx of video games into education. They provide a user experience that’s familiar to most students, interactive, and usually quite fun. So it’s win-win, right?

Not quite. A new infographic from Online Courses spells why teachers are (and aren’t) using video games in the classroom. The visual also breaks down key statistics you should know about. Here’s some of the key bits I found particularly interesting:

Key Takeaways

18% of teachers use games in class on a daily basis.

70% of young people think playing video games could be good for kids.

95% of teachers use digital games that were created specifically for educational use.

A key benefit of video games is they break down tasks and allow learners to control their learning experience.

Are you one of those who think social networks are only good for real-time sports scores and posting updates on your lunch? If so, you’re missing out on social media’s power to help you successfully build and progress in your career.
Whether you’re still in school or are looking for a new job right now, you should begin to develop your social media presence – your “personal brand”. This doesn’t happen overnight; a strong brand takes time to build, so start now. With a good head start, you’ll have an advantage over your competition – both when you’re ready to enter the job market and when the time comes to change careers.

Building your brand doesn’t require a huge investment of money, or even time. However, it can only be built through consistent effort.
Here are some suggestions on where to start:

Amazon's offer to store your downloaded Kindle e-books in the cloud seems outstanding, especially given the eReader's scant 2GB of onboard storage. A tale making the rounds today highlights the dangers of leaving your data completely in third-party hands, however, after a Norwegian woman had her Amazon.co.uk account erased and all her Kindle e-books wiped without warning -- or explanation. Read more...

The following open letter was released by ALA President Maureen Sullivan regarding the refusal of Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin to provide access to their ebooks in US libraries:

It’s a rare thing in a free market when a customer is refused the ability to buy a company’s product and is told its money is “no good here.” Surprisingly, after centuries of enthusiastically supporting publishers’ products, libraries find themselves in just that position with purchasing ebooks from three of the largest publishers in the world. Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Penguin have been denying access to their ebooks for our nation’s 112,000 libraries and roughly 169 million public library users.

Let’s be clear on what this means: If our libraries’ digital bookshelves mirrored the New York Times fiction bestseller list, we would be missing half of our collection any given week due to these publishers’ policies. The popular Bared to You and The Glass Castle are not available in libraries because libraries cannot purchase them at any price. Today’s teens also will not find the digital copy of Judy Blume’s seminal Forever, nor today’s blockbuster Hunger Games series. Read more...

New York Comic-Con featured several giant Lego characters, including this re-creation of the Incredible Hulk.

If the librarian is the original pop culture geek and the arbiter of taste for the library, then New York Comic-Con—the upstart sister to San Diego Comic-Con—is a librarian’s paradise.

Librarians and library lovers are an integral part of comics, TV, film, and books, both as characters in media and creators of media: a celebration of the love of information, from the obscure to the mundane and everything in between. With that in mind, the New York Comic-Con (or NYCC) organizers, dedicate the first of their four-day gala of geek love to all those who use pop culture as an education tool, which, of course, includes librarians. Read more...

A historian or anthropologist spends years working on a monograph, bulking up an argument. A scholarly publisher takes more years to shepherd that argument into print. Meanwhile, academic libraries have ever-smaller amounts of money and space to lavish on such books, which often have more pages than they have readers.

What if scholars, publishers, and tenure-and-promotion committees embraced short-form e-books as a respectable way to deliver serious scholarship? A Kindle Singles model could help academics and publishers pick up the pace of production. It could be priced low enough to appeal to library budgets. It wouldn't devour precious shelf space. It would suit libraries' current desire to build up their e-book collections. And it might pull in new readers for serious scholarship. Read more...

Jews and Chocolate

The next time you pick up a piece of chocolate, consider that you are partaking in an aspect of Jewish history. There are some surprising Jewish connections with chocolate, including Jews in the early chocolate trade and early Jewish chocolate makers. Jews, Pre-Columbians, Catholics, and Protestants also connect in Jews on the Chocolate Trail through its exploration of chocolate’s religious narratives and rituals. Jews on the Chocolate Trail uniquely melds a popularity of chocolate with a fascination about Judaism. Those interested in Judaism and religion will enjoy this unique approach. In combining age old passions for chocolate and religion, Jews on the Chocolate Trail unwraps delightful new themes.
As we travel my husband, Rabbi Mark Hurvitz, and I explore local chocolate opportunities and culture, two Jews enjoying the trail of chocolate around the world.

There is little that irks British defenders of the English language more than Americanisms, which they see creeping insidiously into newspaper columns and everyday conversation. But bit by bit British English is invading America too.

"Spot on - it's just ludicrous!" snaps Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the University of California at Berkeley.

"You are just impersonating an Englishman when you say spot on. Will do - I hear that from Americans. That should be put into quarantine," he adds.

And don't get him started on the chattering classes - its overtones of a distinctly British class system make him quiver.

But not everyone shares his revulsion at the drip, drip, drip of Britishisms - to use an American term - crossing the Atlantic. Read more...

DALLAS, October 17, 2012 - Amanda Todd was only one month away from her sixteenth birthday when she took her own life. Bullied to the point where she believed her life no longer had meaning, she succumbed to the insurmountable pain that her life had become and released her grasp on the world that had caused her so much torment.

How did this beautiful, bright and talented young woman cease to believe her life had value?

What do employers' value? What are they really looking for? According to Natasha Dalzell-Martinez, a research director with Apollo Group, parent company of University of Phoenix, these are the top 10 qualities employers seek today. As a job seeker, employee, and/or a business of one, you will want to develop and promote these qualities in terms that are quantifiable and meaningful to your future or current boss. Try developing these qualities by picking up the books mentioned. Read more...

Embarking on a job search is like preparing to climb a mountain.
Maybe not Mt. Everest, where sherpas are found, but you will still need a
guide to show you the best paths and methods for making the trek. The
terrain can be tricky and unfamiliar so you will want someone to show
you the way.
So if you are ready to prepare for your adventure and you need some help, you’ve come to the right place.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

September 23, 2012

I've been chasing the perfect PC laptop for over a decade now.
Though I've tolerated lugging around five to seven pound machines because I had to, laptops were always about portability first and most of all to me. I quickly gravitated to so-called ultraportable laptops as soon as they became available. The first one was the 2003 Dell Inspiron 300M. It was the first laptop I found that delivered a decent 3-ish pound package without too many compromises. How I loved this little thing. Read more...

The Center for Cartoon Studies and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund are pleased to announce the permanent addition of a “Banned Comics” section to the school’s Schulz Library. The move is both in recognition of the library’s first Banned Books Week in its new location and the first anniversary of the CBLDF acquiring the Comics Code Authority’s infamous “seal of approval.”
The new section will highlight the long history of censorship in comics and raise patrons’ awareness of enduring First Amendment struggles by grouping popular yet oft-challenged landmarks, such as Maus, Watchmen, Bone, Blankets, The Sandman, Fun Home, and Stuck Rubber Baby; displaying an oversized reproduction of the now-defunct CCA seal alongside the works it abolished; and promoting the CBLDF with official signage and brochures.
It’s almost impossible to overstate the impact the Code had on American comics, so it was a symbolic triumph when the CBLDF obtained its seal last year. We’re excited to celebrate this anniversary with our friends at the Fund and inform the Cartoon Studies community about the ongoing defense of our freedom of expression.